


𝐃𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐨 🁡 𝐴𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑙

by Adrenalineshots, sonshineandshowers, TheFibreWitch



Series: Domino 🁡 [40]
Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Digital Art, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hallucinations, Harassment, Health Emergency, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mental Health Issues, Metafiction, Murder Mystery, Nightmares, No Real Death, Surrealism, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, Video, a lot of really strange stuff that happens in altered states of consciousness, anxiousness, major character death in an altered state of consciousness, reader-driven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26505214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adrenalineshots/pseuds/Adrenalineshots, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonshineandshowers/pseuds/sonshineandshowers, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFibreWitch/pseuds/TheFibreWitch
Summary: Selecting 𝐴𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑙 from the bookshelf, Malcolm travels through his own mind.Read this story at:https://www.thedominostory.com/#arielThis book is one part of the Domino series. If you have not yet read thePrefaceorIntroduction, please head there first.
Series: Domino 🁡 [40]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1926451
Kudos: 1
Collections: Domino 🁡, Prodigal Son Big Bang 2020 - Saturday Posts





	𝐃𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐨 🁡 𝐴𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑙

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jameena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jameena/gifts), [MissScorp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissScorp/gifts), [ProcrastinatingSab](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProcrastinatingSab/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Ariel](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/685393) by Sylvia Plath. 



> This book is one part of the Domino series. If you have not yet read the [Preface](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26497927/chapters/64577434#workskin) or [Introduction](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26497927/chapters/64588537#workskin), please head there first.
> 
> Betaed by the wonderful [Jameena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jameena/), [MissScorp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissScorp/), and [ProcrastinatingSab](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProcrastinatingSab/).
> 
> Credit to the creators and their works that inspired and were referenced in this work:  
>  **— Inspiration:**[Ariel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_\(poetry_collection\)) \- Sylvia Plath  
>  **— Cover Song:**[Look What You Made Me Do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gwl_e_cjzg) \- Jack Leopards & The Dolphin Club  
>  **— Assets:**[Stock Vector](https://www.freepik.com/premium-vector/crayon-vector-set_6356675.htm), [Stock Texture](https://www.photos-public-domain.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/white-construction-paper-texture.jpg)

[](https://www.thedominostory.com/images/full/ariel.jpg) |   
---|---  
  
Malcolm has to kill him. He works up the courage with a stiff drink or two, selects the best knife from his collection, and hides it in his shoe. Takes a cab to Claremont Psychiatric Hospital and passes through security without issue. He’s there all the time and he’s been through the screening enough to know what they’re looking for. They’re not taking apart his soles.

 _Click, click, click_ his Oxfords walk beside Mr. David’s. The man with never-ending patience chats about how his day is going and asks if Gil has fully healed. Malcolm gives a brief nod and focuses on his end goal — the cell at the end of the hall. Father, come Dr. Whitly, come The Surgeon. The root of all his trauma.

Dr. Whitly’s existence is threatening the lives of all of his friends. It needs to end, to chop off the tap and let the rest of the roots shrivel to oblivion.

A death sentence.

Mr. David unlocks the door and holds it open for Malcolm to enter. The crimson walls fade into the background at the sight in front of him.

Dr. Whitly’s already dead. Strangled with his own tether, his eyes pushed in with reckless abandon, only bloody voids remaining.

The sight isn’t satisfying. There isn’t any pleasure in someone else having done his dirty work. Isn’t the relief of watching the life drain from the man’s eyes. Only a shell remains, and it’s anticlimactic.

“Mr. David, he’s dead,” Malcolm says plainly as if one of them is missing a spork for their dinner.

Mr. David pauses a moment, then nods his head. “That he is,” he returns with equal steadiness. “I’ll alert medical.”

Every image Malcolm’s had of Dr. Whitly is an evil snarl, cackling that Malcolm’s done something wrong that needs reprimanding, correction. Sometimes with manipulative words, sometimes with chloroform, always with the same malicious intent. There’s nothing on the face before him, just a man at ease in his sleep, not a trouble in the world.

Dr. Whitly’s sleeping better than him. The evil bastard had done everything to hurt his family, and he’s sleeping without issue, a fuzzy bear in hibernation until spring.

How is it fair? How is it just that someone else had the triumph of listening to his last breaths? That someone else had squeezed the very life out of him until his chest rose no more. “Who was here?” Malcolm asks.

“Only guards,” Mr. David says.

“A hit,” Malcolm says. His kill. His chance to show Dr. Whitly who has the upper hand.

“You know your dad.”

There’s camera footage — Malcolm can find out who the murderer is. For the first time in his life, he wonders, does he care? Does he want any sliver of involvement in this case?

The vampire of a man that drained the life from everyone he interacted with sits as lifeless as a statue, a monument to the evil that once inhabited these walls. Malcolm would rather let in the pigeons to roost and speckle his memory than figure out who ended him. The answer might be as unsatisfying as the man’s death.

“This seems for you,” Mr. David says, poking his arm with an envelope. Glancing at it, Malcolm sees plain white, the fine cardstock his father preferred taboo lest he decide to trade it for something else in the facility. What they think Dr. Whitly can’t get a hold of if he wants, Malcolm has no idea.

A note? How suicidal of Dr. Whitly. Had he prepared it after Malcolm had called him? Before? What would have possibly required a penned response? An apology for the years of torment? Never. He’d go to the grave without taking a smidgen of responsibility.

As self-preservation isn’t Malcolm’s strong suit, he opens the envelope. There’s only a dab of spit holding it closed at the point, and then his hand can reach in to pull out the contents — a single sheet of folded lined paper. He unfolds it and reads the greeting. _My boy! If you are reading this, then I am dead._

“Who was in here with him?” Malcolm repeats his earlier question.

Mr. David shrugs.

_Tut, tut — I taught you better than that, son. You thought you could get the last laugh, come kill me with that knife in your shoe._

How would Dr. Whitly have known? Malcolm had gone straight from his loft to Claremont. He was alone in his loft when he left and hadn’t run into anyone in between. There’s no way Dr. Whitly could have known.

_You haven’t murdered anyone — you thought that would actually work?_

It would’ve if Malcolm’s plans hadn’t been intercepted.

_There’s only one person who can kill me. That’s me._

Dr. Whitly may have been capable of many things, but there was no way he would’ve been able to self-inflict those eye wounds or strangulation marks.

_Maybe with a little help. Perks of stardom._

He hired someone to kill him? So Malcolm couldn’t get there first? A last thorn in the side so Malcolm couldn’t win? Who did it?

_Now, now — we’re the same._

The closed circuit camera plays the murder back for him. Hands wrap the tether around Dr. Whitly’s neck, ‘round and ‘round, the man smiling widely while it happens. The same hands plunge thumbs first into his eye sockets, barely a sound emerging from Dr. Whitly’s mouth. He seems so… happy.

Pulling the tether taut, Dr. Whitly’s arms and chest give a last struggle for breath before his whole body goes lax and drops to the floor. Snuffed out like a candle in the window, Dr. Whitly’s face is left with a sooty, purpled hue.

The assailant turns, and his face becomes visible to the camera. Malcolm stares at himself, but he’s not privy to any of the events that happened. Doppelgänger? Illusion? Doctored footage?

Regardless, he’s finally through.

Life doesn’t feel any different.

He needed to be the one to kill Dr. Whitly.

A bottle of chloroform sits on the desk. If he could only remember…

— ◌◯◌ —

The man who answers the apartment door isn’t A. S. Harper. The whole family who lives in the apartment isn’t A. S. Harper, either. After explaining he’s never heard of the woman, Dani asks for directions to the super’s office, and she and JT find themselves in a room off of the lobby.

“We’re looking for A. S. Harper,” she says. “She rented an apartment here. This is her license.”

“Normally, I can’t give that kind of information,” the super replies. “You’ve got a loophole, though.” She pulls open a file cabinet drawer and retrieves a folder. “Only ever had two tenants in that apartment.” She opens the folder on the desk. “She died a couple years back. Paramedics came and everything. You’re the cops — figured you’d know that.”

Dani looks at the lease documents on the top of the folder. The name Andrea Sampson stares back.

“We looked for the wrong person,” JT comments over her shoulder.

“Is it okay if I take photos of this?” Dani asks.

The super nods, she takes the shots they need, and they excuse themselves and leave the building. “Pseudonyms are pretty common,” JT says as soon as they are out of earshot. “But why was there a license for this one? An unexpired license?”

“Why is a dead woman publishing books wasn’t your first question?” She quirks her eyebrow at him.

“Posthumous publishing isn’t unheard of.”

“Did any part of that biography say she was dead?”

“No.”

“How many books were published 2018 or later?”

JT pulls the Wikipedia page back up on his phone. “Six.”

“She sure is prolific for a dead woman.”

“Let’s go pay the publishing company a visit.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Head back to the [Bookshelf](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26497927/chapters/64588570#workskin) to pick another book. :)


End file.
